FILM · 1971 · USA
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
- Directed by
- Mel Stuart
- Runtime
- 100 min
- Studio
- Wolper Pictures
557 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
When eccentric candy man Willy Wonka promises a lifetime supply of sweets and a tour of his chocolate factory to five lucky kids, penniless Charlie Bucket seeks the golden ticket that will make him a winner.
557 Interesting Facts About Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Interesting Facts (32)
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Marilyn Manson's favorite movie; this movie is also referenced in some of his music. When the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) was announced, he wanted the part of Willy Wonka so badly that he actively campaigned for the role but lost out to Johnny Depp. Manson also covered "Wondrous Boat Ride" as "Prelude (The Family Trip)" as the opening song on his album "Portrait of an American Family"
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While rehearsing the scene in which Willy Wonka yells at Grandpa Joe and Charlie for stealing fizzy lifting drinks, Gene Wilder would hold back and act more disappointed than angry. He did this so that, when he screamed at them during filming, the reactions of shock from Jack Albertson and Peter Ostrum would be genuine.
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The chocolate river was made from 150,000 gallons of water, real chocolate and cream. The producers had to change the formula for the chocolate river because the mixture they initially used had turned blood red. The cream caused the mixture to start spoiling, and by the end of filming it smelled terrible. Michael Bollner, who played Augustus Gloop, later described it as "dirty, stinky water."
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Julie Dawn Cole was among the actors fooled by the scene in which Willy limps out of his factory to greet the Golden Ticket winners. In the DVD commentary she says she thought Gene Wilder had actually injured his leg and that filming had to be stopped temporarily. Like the rest of the viewers, her reaction is genuine.
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In the scene where the tour first enters the Chocolate River room, Julie Dawn Cole did not know that the stone she used to break the large piece of candy was real, and she fell on it and injured her knee. If you look carefully, you can see blood on her left sock. She still has a scar on her knee from the injury.
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Asked for his thoughts on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Gene Wilder said he liked Johnny Depp in the role of Willy Wonka but did not like the film overall because he is not a fan of director Tim Burton, and he said that he generally feels insulted when films are remade, even though Burton's film is an adaptation of the book rather than a remake.
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During the "Wonkamobile" scene, the foam that sprayed out was assembled from basic fire extinguishers, but what the actors and crew did not know was that the foam itself was a strong skin irritant; so after filming the scene, the actors and actresses were left in serious discomfort, as their skin swelled and they needed several days of medical treatment and recovery.
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The face in the psychedelic tunnel sequence belongs to Walon Green, a friend of Mel Stuart and the screenwriter of The Wild Bunch (1969). According to Stuart's memoirs, Green is the only person who would allow a centipede to crawl on his face for the sake of a children's film. He admitted that the only thing that convinced him was that centipedes are harmless and do not bite like poisonous centipedes.
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The film was shot in Munich, Germany, because it was significantly cheaper than the United States and had a "storybook quality." Mel Stuart also liked the unusualness of the locations and said he wanted to shoot somewhere that could not be identified as any particular time or place, unlike New York City, St. Louis or London.
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In the film, Charlie's father is dead. In the book he is alive and works in a toothpaste factory. The change was made because the producers wanted to present Willy Wonka as the father figure Charlie never had. Charlie's father appeared in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), released 34 years later.
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Production Story (65)
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Roald Dahl was reportedly so angry with the treatment of his book (mainly stemming from the massive rewrite by David Seltzer) that he refused permission for the book's sequel, "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator," to be filmed. Seltzer had an idea for a new sequel, but legal issues meant it never got off the ground. Reportedly, Dahl was so unhappy that he refused ever to watch the completed film in its entirety. Once, while staying in a hotel, he accidentally tuned into a television airing of the movie but reportedly changed the channel immediately when he realized what he was watching. Funnily enough, behind-the-scenes footage on the DVD shows him looking happy while visiting the set, and he even attended the premiere. Julie Dawn Cole, commenting in 2011 on these events, remembers him as being a large, scary man.
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A subplot unique to this film is that a man claiming to be industrialist Arthur Slugworth (later revealed to be an impostor) attempts to bribe all five children into acting as corporate spies and stealing Wonka's secrets. One scene implies that Veruca is considering the offer, and another reveals that Mike is willing to spy on Wonka. Charlie turns down the offer, and Augustus and Violet seem to have ignored the temptation.
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In the film, Charlie's father is deceased. In the book, he is alive and works for a toothpaste factory. The change was made as producers wanted to portray Willy Wonka as the father figure that Charlie never had. Charlie's father ended up appearing in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) released 34 years later.
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Author Roald Dahl wrote the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and was originally hired to write the screenplay. However, he never finished it. Instead he wrote an outline that kept referring to different sections of his original book. The Omen writer David Seltzer was hired to do a rewrite. After that, Dahl quit the film and disowned it, though he remained the only credited screenwriter on it.
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Wonka's literary quotations were not in Roald Dahl's original script. They were added for one reason by David Seltzer when he rewrote the screenplay. The quotes include: "Is it my soul that calls upon my name?" from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" "The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last" is a quote from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest." "Across the desert lies the Promised Land" isn't a quote but a reference to the story of Moses and the Israelites, who had to cross a desert to reach Canaan (their Promised Land). "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by" from the John Masefield poem "Sea Fever" "Round the world and home again, that's the sailor's way!" from William Allingham's "Homeward Bound" The lines to the song "Sweet lovers love the spring..." are from Shakespeare's "As You Like It." "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" is the entire text of the poem "Reflections on Ice Breaking" by Ogden Nash. "Where is fancy bred..." and "So shines a good deed in a weary world" are from William Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" (though the line from "Merchant of Venice" was slightly rewritten; Portia's actual line is "So shines a good deed in a naughty world"). "We are the music makers..." is from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "Ode," which also gave us the phrase "movers and shakers" "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" from John Keats's "Endymion: A Poetic Romance." "Swifter than eagles, stronger than lions" is a passage from the Bible, specifically 2 Samuel 1:23.
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Several actors were offered the role of Wonka before Gene Wilder: * Joel Grey was first choice for the role of Willy Wonka, but was not considered physically imposing enough. * Roald Dahl's original choice to play Willy Wonka was Spike Milligan. * Peter Sellers was desperate to play the role, and even begged Dahl for approval. * The role was offered to Ron Moody, who declined it. * Jon Pertwee had to turn down the role because he was in the tight schedule of Doctor Who (1963) at the time. * Sidney James and Kenneth Williams showed interest in the role. * Frankie Howerd was offered the role, but scheduling conflicts with Up Pompeii (1971) and The Chastity Belt (1972) forced him to turn down the role. * Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Michael Crawford were also considered for the role. * All six performing members of Monty Python - Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin - had expressed great interest in playing the role, but they were deemed not big enough names for an international audience. Cleese, Idle, and Palin were considered for the same role in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Eric Idle recorded the audio version of the book.
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One flaw David Seltzer found in the book was that Charlie was too perfect and had no flaws compared to the other kids, which he found unrealistic. These scenes were cut from the 2005 film since they were not in the book (they were only minor elements that were briefly mentioned in the book), which ironically led to the film being criticized for having a Charlie who was too perfect and flawless.
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Paramount Pictures originally distributed the film. After the film flopped at the box office and briefly fell into obscurity, Paramount declined to renew their rights to the movie once the contract was about to expire and relinquished them to Warner Bros. Pictures. When the film was re-released on 4K UHD for the 50th Anniversary, the disc restored the original Paramount Pictures logo at the start for historical purposes. It was the first time in decades that the film had ever been released with its original opening logos.
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The art director for the film was Harper Goff. His name would not be familiar to general audiences, but fantasy and science fiction fans would know him instantly as the art director for Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Besides many of the special effects, he designed the iconic Nautilus exterior, as well as the submarines interior sets.
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There were some suggestions at the time of release that the title change from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) was at the instigation of Afro-American groups who objected to the juxtaposition of the words "Charlie" and "chocolate" in the title. Racial concerns also dictated a change in the look of the Oompa-Loompas. In early versions of the novel and the illustrations, the Oompa-Loompas were depicted as black African pygmies. At the time, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protested that the Oompa-Loompas were overly reminiscent of enslaved Africans. The film's production team chose to depict the Oompa-Loompas as having orange skin and green hair. In 1973, Roald Dahl revised the novel to describe the Oompa-Loompas as white-skinned.
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The inspiration behind the book came from Roald Dahl's childhood. According to his autobiography "Boy: Tales of Childhood," he and his classmates were willing guinea pigs for Cadbury's and would test out new inventions and confectionery creations, which later inspired Dahl to write the story.
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In the featurette Pure Imagination: The Story of 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' (2001), Mel Stuart and David L. Wolper described that they brought in David Seltzer (who had worked with Wolper on several shows) because Roald Dahl's screenplay was missing many story elements they felt were needed, such as a villain. According to Seltzer, he went to Munich and walked into a situation (working on the screenplay of a big musical with no prior screenwriting experience) that in hindsight, he wouldn't have done.
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Roald Dahl disowned the film, the script of which was partially rewritten by David Seltzer after Dahl failed to meet deadlines. Dahl said he was "disappointed" because "he thought it placed too much emphasis on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie," as well as the non-casting of Spike Milligan. He was also "infuriated" by the deviations in the plot Seltzer devised in his draft of the screenplay, including the conversion of Slugworth, a minor character in the book, into a spy (so that the movie could have a villain) and the "fizzy lifting drinks" scene. To add insult to injury, Seltzer had Willy Wonka spout quotations all the time that were not originally in the book. As a result, Dahl refused to sell the company the rights to the book's sequel, "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator."
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Peter Ostrum mentioned in the featurette Pure Imagination: The Story of 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' (2001) that he was in the sixth grade when he read from the book for the part of Charlie in May 1970 because there wasn't a script. In late July, he went to New York City for a screentest, and several weeks later, he was told he had the role, leaving his family ten days to relocate him to Munich for five months.
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Jim Backus was the original choice for Mr. Salt, but he was considered too recognizable a figure. Brian Murphy was also approached for the role. Backus and Roy Kinnear, who got the role of Mr. Salt, both appeared in the British television shows Man About the House (1973) and its spin off George & Mildred (1976).
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Contrary to popular belief, Fred Astaire was never considered to play Willy Wonka. According to Mel Stuart's book "Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka," Fred expressed interest in playing the eccentric chocolatier, but that wasn't brought to either Stuart or David L. Wolper's attention. Just as well, because, as Stuart says in his book, he didn't conceive of Willy Wonka as a 72 year old man, which happened to be what Astaire was at the time.
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According to Mel Stuart's book "Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," the reason everything in Willy's office is cut in half was that Stuart couldn't bear the thought of, after having gone through all the whimsical and creative rooms in the factory, ending the movie in an ordinary office. Everything was cut in half to make the room look more Wonka-esque.
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After the success of this film, the studio had planned to adapt the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. However, Roald Dahl so disliked this film that he refused to sell the rights to his subsequent book. There was talk of writing a screenplay for an original sequel, but this was abandoned, and no sequel was ever made.
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The NBC showing of the film on November 23, 1975 was delayed 45 minutes by an NFL game between the Oakland Raiders and the Washington Redskins which went to overtime. Despite numerous calls to NBC by people wanting to see the film, the game stayed on. The 1968 "Heidi" game and subsequent uproar caused by it caused networks to change their rules.
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Children's literature authors are notoriously hostile to Hollywood and its attempts to adapt their stories. Roald Dahl (though he reportedly often appeared on the set before the movie's premier, according to people like Julie Dawn Cole) hated this movie and was very vocal about his distaste for the press. A year before this, Norton Juster, the author of the similarly-themed The Phantom Tollbooth (1970), was also very critical and hostile towards the Chuck Jones/MGM joint film production of his story, which came out in 1970 and starred Butch Patrick. And two years after Chocolate Factory's premiere, E.B. White trashed the 1973 Hanna-Barbera version of his classic Charlotte's Web (1973), calling it a "travesty" C.S. Lewis was so worried about a terrible live-action movie version of his Chronicles of Narnia coming out that he wrote a letter to the BBC forbidding them to do a film version of his stories. P.L. Travers also hated Mary Poppins (1964). The irony is all these movies did come out, most of them were box office hits, all of them were warmly greeted by the critical community, and all of them are regarded as classic children's films by the public. In fact, these movies have ironically only solidified these books' classic status in the canon of children's literature.
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After reading the script, Gene Wilder said he would take the role of Willy Wonka under one condition: that he would be allowed to limp and then suddenly somersault in the scene when he first meets the children. When director Mel Stuart asked why, Wilder replied that having Wonka do this meant that "from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth." Stuart asked, "If I say no, you won't do the picture?" Wilder said, "I'm afraid that's the truth."
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The same year as the film's release, Aubrey Woods - who played Bill, the sweet shop owner - appeared as The Controller in the Doctor Who (1963) serial "Day of the Daleks". Jon Pertwee, who was The Doctor in the show at the time, had been offered the role of Willy Wonka, but turned the role down, due to his commitment to the series.
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The country where the film takes place had been a mystery for several years. Various measures were taken to make sure it stayed mysterious: -The cars do not have US license plates. -The title of the newspaper is generic and does not reveal the name of the city. -The identity of the coin that Charlie finds in the gutter is not revealed. -After selling him a candy bar, the dealer does not state the exact balance due, as is customarily done in any transaction (but would disclose the unit of currency); he merely clears his throat. -Mr. Wilkinson/Slugworth bribes Charlie with "Ten thousand of these," referring to currency units, but does not use the currency's name. -Charlie never appears on television; the countries were all revealed during T.V. interviews. -On the day they arrive at the Wonka factory, Charlie and Grandpa Joe are the only individuals not holding a flag of their native country. -In the aerial scene at the end, cars are seen driving on the right. It was revealed that the movie was filmed mostly in Germany, and other areas of the UK
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The film was shot on a shoestring budget of only $3 million, which required Mel Stuart and David Seltzer to cut several scenes from the book that could not be filmed with the budget constraints, the most famous ones being the scene where Prince Pondicherry of India has Wonka construct him an entire palace of chocolate, and the squirrel shelling scene replaced with a golden geese chamber instead. Trying to train dozens of squirrels to recreate the scene in the book would have been impossible for this film.
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The idea to adapt Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into a film came from director Mel Stuart's 10-year-old daughter, who read the book and asked her father to make a movie about it. Stuart then took the book to producer David L. Wolper, who happened to be in talks with the Quaker Oats company. Quaker had recently acquired a candy company; Wolper proceeded to convince Quaker to make "Wonka Bars," who financed the film to promote them.
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The film is often erroneously thought of as a Warner Bros. production. In fact, the film was independently made and the 1971 release was handled by Paramount Pictures. However, the theatrical distribution rights lapsed in 1977, and Paramount, in the days before home video, thought the film was of little commercial use to them anymore, so they never renewed them. The rights were eventually bought by Warner Bros. in 1983 when it was expanding its Warner Home Video catalog after the home video boom of the early 1980s. The film was first released by them onto VHS and Betamax in 1984. Warner Bros. was also responsible for the 25th anniversary theatrical re-release in 1996, and all subsequent home video releases. Warner Bros. did produce Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
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Anthony Newley wanted to play Bill, the owner of the candy store, but he was deemed too recognizable; he instead wrote the music for the film. Richard O'Sullivan was also considered for the role. Don Lane auditioned for the role and so impressed Mel Stuart that he was considered for the role of Willy Wonka instead. Sammy Davis Jr. also expressed an interest in the role, but Stuart felt that the presence of a big star in the candy store scene would break the reality. Nevertheless, the candy store song "The Candyman" became a staple of Davis' stage show for many years. Davis's version of the song was co-released with the movie and became a Billboard Top 100 hit.
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Mel Stuart originally didn't want Willy Wonka to be a musical, as this film was simply going to be a straightforward fantasy film based on the novel per Roald Dahl's wishes, but producers convinced him by pointing out the successes of Mary Poppins (1964) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). The musical numbers were included via rewrites to Dahl's original script by David Seltzer, which left Dahl quite furious.
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When Mel Stuart took the book to his producer friend David L. Wolper, he didn't know that Wolper had been in talks with the Quaker Oats company about finding a film property that could accommodate some product placement for them. This led to the creation of the Wonka Bar, a major innovative collaboration between sweet manufacturer and film company at the time.
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The film was originally financed by the Quaker Oats Company, which hoped to tie it to a new candy bar it intended to bring on the market. When the film was released, the company began marketing its Wonka chocolate bars. Unfortunately, an error in the chocolate formula caused the bars to melt too quickly, even while on the shelf, and so they were taken off the market. Quaker sold the brand to St. Louis-based Sunline Inc. (which later became part of Nestlé via Rowntree) not long after this. Sunline made the brand successful, and Wonka-branded candy (most of which isn't chocolate-based) was available in the U.S. until the 2010s. Although the novel on which the movie was based was called "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the movie was renamed to promote this candy tie-in.
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Despite all the chocolate bars being practically designed for the movie in abundance, very few relics and props of the film survived. Director Mel Stuart explained this regret of not keeping many of the props (as they would be considered highly valuable), citing that at the time of production on a film, no one knew just how successful it would be.
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In the featurette Pure Imagination: The Story of 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' (2001), writer David Seltzer and director Mel Stuart relate that David had left Munich for his vacation cabin in Maine, thinking his contribution to the film was completed when Mel realized that the screenplay ended with Grandpa's line: "Yippie!" Mel phoned Maine from Munich and told David that he couldn't finish the picture without a good ending line. Dave responded with the only thing he could think of: that they were flying in the air. Willy Wonka looks at Charlie and says, in a very warning voice, the "happily ever after" lines.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
Contrary to popular belief, the Slugworth subplot and the Fizzy Lifting Drinks appeared briefly in the novel and were not original concepts. Slugworth was among the many rival chocolate factory owners who sent spies to steal the recipes. Wonka was forced to fire his human workers and shut down the factory for many years until he found the Oompa Loompas. This element was padded out to give another test for the children's morality and attitude. The Fizzy Lifting Drinks are depicted precisely as they are in the book, although Charlie never tasted them. The sequence with Charlie breaking the rules was added to lead to a more dramatic resolution in Wonka's office at the end.
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The actors' reactions in some scenes were spontaneous: when Wonka limps out of his factory to greet the Golden Ticket winners, everyone's reaction is genuine. The children's reactions are genuine when they first enter the Chocolate Room and see the candy gardens. While filming the tunnel scene, the actors' reactions to Wonka singing were genuine; Peter Ostrum, Jack Albertson and Denise Nickerson were horrified and thought Gene Wilder was having a psychotic breakdown. In the scene where Wonka shouts at Charlie and Grandpa Joe, Ostrum's and Albertson's reactions are real. Wilder had actually wanted to tell Ostrum beforehand, but director Mel Stuart strongly opposed it so as not to spoil the surprise.
Behind the Scenes (120)
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While giving interviews as part of the 40th Anniversary celebration of the theatrical release, Denise Nickerson mentioned that, because of all the gum she had to chew as Violet, she ended up with thirteen cavities. The reason is that, although sugarless gum was around in the early 1970s, the formula was a bit different than that of modern sugarless gums, and didn't make very good bubbles. So Denise was stuck chewing regular, sugared gum.
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Julie Dawn Cole was among the actors fooled by the scene in which Willy limps out of his factory to greet the Golden Ticket winners. She mentions in the DVD commentary that she thought that Gene Wilder had injured his leg for real and that the filming would have to be temporarily halted. Her reaction, along with the rest of the audience, is genuine.
- #105
The chocolate river was made from 150,000 gallons of water, real chocolate, and cream. The filmmakers had to change the formula for the chocolate river because, originally, the concoction they were using turned blood red. Because of the cream, the mixture began to spoil, and by the end of filming, it smelled terrible. Michael Bollner, who played Augustus Gloop, later described it as "dirty, stinky water."
- #106
During the "Pure Imagination" song, Willy Wonka whips his cane around here and there to stop the crowd in place during various points of the song. At around fifty-three minutes in the DVD commentary, Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, stated that during one of the takes, as Gene Wilder whipped his cane around, he accidentally whacked Themmen. In her memoir "I Want it Now!," Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, mentioned that she was also accidentally hit by the cane several times.
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Peter Ostrum said in the DVD commentary that he and Jack Albertson were very excited to do the Fizzy Lifting Drink scene, thinking it would be a lot of fun, but that it wasn't due to the metal surrounding them being rather sharp, and the harnesses being tight in the crotch area. Albertson joked that music from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite should be played in the background of that scene.
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Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) admits on the DVD commentary that she accidentally kept her Everlasting Gobstopper and Golden Ticket from the set. Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket) said he returned the Golden Ticket because he was told to. Among other props that Cole kept from the film were a Scrumdiddlyumptious bar and a Wonka Bar. Julie kept one of the original golden eggs given to her as a 13th birthday gift on set. It was later sold at auction as a rare piece of movie memorabilia. She also sold her Everlasting Gobstopper when the Tim Burton remake came out for an undisclosed amount. To this day, she still has a Scrumdiddlyumptious bar and a Wonka Bar. Her Golden Ticket is displayed in Sweet Pete's candy store in Jacksonville, Florida.
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In the scene when the tour first enters the Chocolate River room, Julie Dawn Cole didn't know the rock that she uses to crack the large piece of candy open was real, and she drops down onto it, injuring her knee. If you look carefully, you can see her left stocking has blood on it. She still has a scar on her knee from the injury.
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In the scene where Wonka angrily reads to Charlie and Grandpa Joe the contract out loud, he reads two lines in Latin: "Fax mentis incendium gloriae culpum," which translates to "the torch of the mind lights the path to glory," and "Nemo bis punitor delicatum," which translates to "no one can be twice punished for the same offence."
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A lot of the candy first seen in the factory was balloons inflated to resemble candy or Styrofoam props painted. If one looks closely when Violet is about to eat the giant gummy bear, you can see that she doesn't bite down on the candy, and neither does Mr. Beauregard when he unrolls the fruit rope and bites down in the middle.
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The scene of Violet Beareguarde's demise, where she swells up into a blueberry, was done in two takes. Take one was pumping air into an inflatable suit, and take two involved stuffing Denise Nickerson into a two-piece styrofoam cut out. When rolling Denise around in her blueberry suit, the Oompa Loompas had a hard time controlling the rolling actress. They would send her crashing into the wall several times, prompting Denise to say in the DVD commentary that the Oompa Loompas didn't have their "blueberry driver's licenses." At the time, the development of color layering was in process. According to the book, Violet's face and hair turns blue. Mel Stuart worked with it, but was only able to turn her face blue. Further development of the color layering was perfected by the time Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was released and was ready for use to make the light-saber concept look good.
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Whenever a scene was filmed inside the Buckets' house, Ernst Ziegler - who played Grandpa George - would take off his shoes and tuck them under the set bed before crawling in to film the scenes. When it came time to film the portion of the "I've Got a Golden Ticket" song that involved Grandpa Joe and Charlie looking under the bed, director Mel Stuart wanted to move Ziegler's shoes out of the way to film the scene, but Ziegler protested vehemently, as he was afraid they would take his shoes away. He greatly valued those shoes, as they were his only remaining possessions before World War II. Eventually, Stuart convinced Ziegler to allow them to move his shoes to film the scene.
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A dummy made up to look like Michael Bollner - who played Augustus Gloop - was used for the scene where Augustus gets stuck in the pipe, specifically during the long shots of the guests watching him from across the river and when he eventually shoots up the pipe. This is referenced in the audio commentary on the DVD and Blu-ray. A picture of the dummy can even be seen in the "Cast/Crew" section on the 30th Anniversary DVD of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).
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This movie was shot in Munich, Germany, but the producers had to go outside Germany to recruit enough little people to play the Oompa Loompas. Many of the people cast as Oompa Loompas (German or otherwise) did not speak English fluently, if at all. This is why some appear not to know the words to songs during the musical numbers.
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Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregarde) and Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) had a crush on Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket) and had kind of a love triangle going on during the production, with Denise and Julie competing each day to sit next to the boy star. During filming, the girls would alternate days over which one would spend time with Ostrum. Bob Roe - the son of the first assistant director, Jack Roe - was also an object of attraction for the two. On the day they didn't get to spend with Peter, they would spend it with Roe.
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The reactions of the actors and actresses in some scenes are spontaneous: In the scene where Wonka limps out of his factory to greet the Golden Ticket winners, everyone's reaction is genuine. When the children first enter the Chocolate Room and see the candy gardens, their reactions are genuine. When filming the tunnel scene, the actors' reactions to Wonka's singing were genuine; Peter Ostrum, Jack Albertson, and Denise Nickerson were all terrified and had thought Gene Wilder had gone into a psychotic meltdown. In the scene where Wonka is screaming at Charlie and Grandpa Joe, Ostrum's and Albertson's reactions are real. Wilder actually wanted to tell Ostrum beforehand, but director Mel Stuart advised strongly against it, so as not to ruin the illusion of surprise.
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The face in the psychedelic tunnel movie is that of Walon Green, friend of Mel Stuart, and screenwriter of The Wild Bunch (1969). According to Stuart's memoirs, Green is the only person who would agree to let a millipede crawl on his face for the sake of a children's film. He confessed the only thing that convinced him was that millipedes are harmless and don't bite, like the venomous centipedes.
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The film was shot in Munich, Germany, because it was significantly cheaper than the United States, and had a "storybook quality." Mel Stuart also liked the unfamiliarity of the locations, and said that he wanted to film somewhere that couldn't be identified as any time or place, unlike New York City, St. Louis, or London.
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The scene of Mike's downfall was difficult to film. When seen far away while in the television, it was accomplished through bluescreen. While seen in the television from close-up, Paris Themmen - who played Mike - was standing on a platform on a huge television set. The shot where Mrs. Teevee picks him up was a doll, and the single shot where we see a close-up of Mike dangling from his mom's fingers (at around one hour and thirty minutes) was accomplished by having Paris dangle from a styrofoam thumb and forefinger covered with fabric.
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The scene where the technician tries to impress the three business people with the giant computer to (unsuccessfully) give the results of the (then three) remaining Golden Tickets was the last scene filmed for the movie. It was filmed at such a last minute that there was a ton of luggage scattered around the set, as the cast and crew were already in the process of packing up to wrap up the movie.
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In Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (2003), the actors playing the Oompa-Loompas said the makeup was extremely uncomfortable, and the makeup man would be on-set because the hot studio lights would melt their makeup off, causing constant touch-ups. The layers of makeup would become hard for the actors to scrape off at the end of the day.
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Unlike the other interview scenes, Augustus Gloop's interview was filmed at an authentic restaurant in Munich; most of the cast members went there for lunch while the movie was being filmed. The restaurant is called Hofbräukeller and was completely rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in the late 1980s.
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Julie Dawn Cole - who played Veruca Salt - explained in her memoir "I Want it Now!" that the mixing bike in the Inventing Room was initially meant to be pedalled by an Oompa Loompa. When it came time to film the scene, however, it was discovered that none of the Oompa Loompa actors' legs were long enough to reach the pedals. So the filmmakers came up with a creative solution: Gene Wilder would do the pedalling instead, while singing "Sweet Lovers Love the Springtime."
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The book never specifies where Charlie and the Wonka factory are located. Nor does the film, although all of the exteriors were filmed in Germany to give it a fairy tale look. All of the actors In Charlie's town speak in both American and British accents, with the odd German inflection sneaking in here and there, which further obscures any precise location.
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According to the director Mel Stuart's "Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka," when Gene Wilder walked in to audition, Stuart knew before he'd even uttered a single word that he had found his Willy Wonka. The audition convinced him even further, so when Wilder finished and left the room, Stuart chased him down the hallway, cut him off at the elevator bank, grabbed his arm, and told him, "You're doing this picture, no two ways about it! You are Willy Wonka!" Producer David L. Wolper, however, was furious because he hadn't yet had the chance to negotiate a fee.
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During the "Wonkamobile" scene, the foam used to spurt out was compiled from basic fire extinguishers, but what was unknown to the cast and crew was that the foam itself was a potent skin irritant, so after shooting the scene, the actors and actresses were left in considerable discomfort when their skin puffed up and required several days to receive medical treatment and recovery.
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Before entering the Inventing Room, Willy Wonka gives an introductory speech in German, with an accent, but otherwise phonetically and grammatically correct. It goes "Meine Herrschaften, schenken Sie mir Ihre Aufmerksamkeit. Sie kommen jetzt in den interessantesten und gleichzeitig geheimsten Raum meiner Fabrik. Meine Damen und Herren: der Inventing Room." He pronounces the German "r" correctly and says "Inventing Room" with a proper German accent. The speech translates: "Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention. You now come into the most interesting room of my factory, the most secret room at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen: the Inventing Room."
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Denise Nickerson had a Violet-esque experience in real life. She said in the DVD commentary that one day in math class, kids started pointing at her and laughing, and one of her friends told her she was turning purple. The make-up used on her for the film had seeped into her pores and started to resurface (which, she jokingly remarks, prevented her from getting any dates at that school).
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The town of Nordlingen, Germany, over which the Glass Elevator flies at the end, has a rare distinction. It is located inside a twenty-five kilometer (fifteen and a half mile) wide crater from an asteroid impact of over fourteen million years ago. You can just see the ridges of the crater's edge in the top of the screen (it is not the town wall.) Some stone structures in Nordlingen, and surrounding areas, are speckled with tiny little diamonds from the impact.
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In the DVD commentary, Denise Nickerson and Paris Themmen cited lines they say in the film that have English inflection, due to time spent around Julie Dawn Cole. Nickerson's is when she repeats "Everlasting Gobstopper" after Willy Wonka first shows them to the children, and Themmen's is when he asks, "Am I coming in clear" after being sent through television.
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According to Julie Dawn Cole's book, her first scene was actually the last scene that was filmed with her in it. It was her in her fathers business, with his employees opening all of the Wonka bars. Before this scene was filmed, Julie got a visit from mother nature and the staff noticed. Her breast have grown, The director wanted to wrap her breasts so they would appear smaller, like the other scenes. Julie asked them not to. So, the director decided not to.
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While rehearsing the scene in which Willy Wonka yells at Grandpa Joe and Charlie for stealing his fizzy drinks, Gene Wilder held himself back and acted more disappointed than angry. He did this so that Jack Albertson's and Peter Ostrum's shocked reactions when he shouted at them during filming would be genuine.
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During the song 'Pure Imagination,' Willy Wonka swings his cane around to hold back the crowd. In the DVD commentary, Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, recounted that during one take Gene Wilder accidentally hit him with the cane. Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, wrote in her memoir that the cane struck her several times as well.
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The scene in which Violet Beauregarde turns into a blueberry was shot in two stages: first air was pumped into an inflatable suit, then Denise Nickerson was placed inside a two-piece styrofoam mold. As the Oompa Loompas rolled her, they lost control and slammed her into the wall repeatedly; in the DVD commentary, Denise said they 'didn't have a blueberry license.' At the time, the color-layering technique was still in development; while Violet's face and hair turn blue in the book, Mel Stuart could only make her face blue. This technique was later perfected for the lightsaber effects in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
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In the scenes at the Bucket family's home, Ernst Ziegler, who played Grandpa George, would take off his shoes and hide them under the bed. While shooting the part of 'I've Got a Golden Ticket' where the bed is looked under, director Mel Stuart wanted to film the shoes, but Ziegler objected, afraid they would be taken away since they were his last possessions from before the Second World War. In the end, Stuart persuaded him.
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In the DVD commentary, Peter Ostrum said that he and Jack Albertson had looked forward to the Fizzy Lifting Drink scene, thinking it would be great fun, but that it was not enjoyable at all because of the sharpness of the metal fittings and the straps pinching their groin area. Albertson jokingly added that Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite should have been playing in the background of that scene.
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Shooting Mike's fall scene was difficult. The long shots inside the television were done with a blue screen. For the close-ups, Paris Themmen stood on a platform inside a giant television set. The scene where his mother lifts him was shot with a doll, and the close-up of him dangling from her fingers was filmed by suspending Paris from a fabric-covered styrofoam thumb and index finger.
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In the scene where Augustus Gloop gets stuck in the pipe, a dummy resembling Michael Bollner was used, especially in the wide shots with the people watching him from across the river and at the moment he shoots out of the pipe. This detail also appears in the DVD and Blu-ray commentaries; a photo of the dummy can be seen in the cast/crew section of the 30th anniversary special edition DVD.
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Most of the sweets first seen in the factory were balloons inflated to look like candy or painted styrofoam props. If you look carefully as Violet is about to bite the giant jelly bean, you can see that she does not actually bite it; likewise, when Mr. Beauregard unwraps the fruit strip and bites into the middle, he does not really bite it either.
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The actors who played the Oompa Loompas in the 2003 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory said the makeup was extremely uncomfortable and that the hot studio lights melted it, so the makeup artist had to be on set constantly to touch it up. At the end of the day, scraping off the makeup layer by layer became torture for the actors.
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The book never specifies where Charlie's and Wonka's factory are located. The film does not either, but all the exterior shots were done in Germany to give a fairy-tale look. All the actors in Charlie's town speak with both American and British accents, mixed here and there with strange German inflections, which makes it even harder to pin down a definite location.
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The film's art director was Harper Goff. His name may not be familiar to general audiences, but fantasy and science fiction fans recognize him at once as the art director of Disney's '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'. Along with many special effects, he designed the exterior of the iconic Nautilus and the submarine's interior sets.
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According to Julie Dawn Cole's book, her first scene was in fact the last scene shot with her. It was the scene at her father's workplace, where the workers open all the Wonka bars. Before this scene was shot, Julie had entered puberty and the crew noticed. Her breasts had grown; the director wanted to bind them so they would look smaller as in the other scenes. Julie asked them not to. The director gave up on the idea.
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Characters & Cast (270)
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During their interactions in the film, Violet Beauregarde seems constantly annoyed with Veruca Salt. She verbally confronts and insults Veruca twice, with Veruca failing to respond. Despite Veruca demonstrating a fiery temper when interacting with her father, she does not react at all to rather insulting behavior by Violet, Willy Wonka, and even a mocking line from Charlie.
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Before boarding his guests aboard the Wonkatania, he introduces his ship in French: "mesdames et messieurs, maintenant nous allons faire grand petit voyage par bateau. Voulez-vous entrer le Wonkatania?" Translated into English, he says "Ladies and gentlemen, now we're going to take a big little boat trip. Do you want to enter the Wonkatania?"
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Augustus Gloop is from Dusselheim, West Germany; Violet Beauregarde is from Miles City, Montana (which is the only location mentioned that is real); and Mike Teevee is from Marble Falls, Arizona. Charlie Bucket's and Veruca Salt's hometowns are never mentioned throughout the movie, but it is likely Veruca and her family reside in England: her number is over the British Isles, Mr. Salt tells the workers he will grant a £1 bonus to whoever finds the next Golden Ticket, and there is a sign inside the factory reading "SALT'S: THE PEANUTS OF THE QUEEN!"
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Augustus Gloop is German, and Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teavee are Americans. Veruca Salt's nationality is unspecified in the original novel, though her introduction scene in the film implies that she lives in the United Kingdom. The 2005 film outright shows that Veruca is from the UK. Charlie's nationality is intentionally ambiguous in both film versions and the novel.
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Both in the novel and the film, Mike Teavee is obsessed with watching television. In the novel, he likes gangster films, while in the film version, he likes Western films. An additional character trait in the movie is that he is a gun enthusiast and aspires to own guns. His father tells him that he will not let him own a gun before he turns 12 years old.
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This was the only film role of Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket. Ostrum turned down David L. Wolper's offer of a three-film contract because he wanted to keep his options open. After becoming depressed at the premiere, he bought a horse, which led to his becoming a veterinarian. Ostrum tried returning to acting only once, when he auditioned for the role of Alan Strang after Peter Firth left the 1975 Broadway production of "Equus." As of 2013, Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, was the only one of the child actors still acting.
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The film was shot in Munich, Germany, but the producers had to go outside Germany to hire people small enough to play the Oompa Loompas. Most of those who took on the role of the Oompa Loompas could not speak English fluently, or did not speak it at all. For this reason, some of them appear not to know the lyrics of the songs during the musical numbers.
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Anthony Newley wanted to play Bill, the owner of the candy shop, but was considered too recognizable; instead he wrote the film's music. Richard O'Sullivan was also considered for the role. Don Lane auditioned for the part and impressed Mel Stuart so much that he was considered for the role of Willy Wonka instead. Sammy Davis Jr. also expressed interest in the role, but Stuart felt that the presence of a major star in the candy shop scene would break the realism. Even so, the candy shop song "The Candyman" remained the centerpiece of Davis's stage show for many years. Davis's version of the song was released alongside the film and became a Billboard Top 100 hit.
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Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, admitted in the DVD commentary that she accidentally kept the Everlasting Gobstopper and the Golden Ticket from the set. Peter Ostrum, meanwhile, stated that he returned his Golden Ticket because he was told to do so. Cole's collection of mementos also included a Scrumdiddlyumptious bar and a Wonka Bar; the Golden Ticket is currently displayed in a candy shop in Florida.
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In the 2001 documentary, Peter Ostrum recounted that in May 1970, while still in the sixth grade, he read from the book for the role of Charlie. At the end of July he was called to New York for a screen test, and when he learned within a few weeks that he had won the role, he and his family had to move to Munich within ten days.
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While Mike Teavee is an angry character in the novel, the film version is much calmer and relatively friendly toward the other children. He is also set apart from the others as the only 'naughty' child who enjoys his transformation in the factory; his mother's shocked reaction stands in contrast to this.
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In the DVD commentary, Denise Nickerson and Paris Themmen said that, influenced by the time they spent with Julie Dawn Cole, a British accent crept into some of their lines. Nickerson's repetition of the word 'Everlasting Gobstopper' and Themmen's question after passing through the television bear traces of this influence.
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Although Mike Teavee's obsession with television is common to both the novel and the film, his interests differ: in the novel he likes gangster films, while in the film he is drawn to westerns. In the film, Mike is also portrayed as a boy who loves guns, and his father tells him he will not buy him a gun until he is 12.
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Gloria Manon, who played the woman demanding Wonka bars for her husband Harold in the hostage scene, also plays the female reporter who interviews Mike Teavee. Although she remains slightly outside the camera angle, she skillfully combines these two roles with a single line directed at Mike.
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In an interview given during the 40th anniversary celebrations, Denise Nickerson, in the role of Violet, revealed that she had 13 teeth decayed because of the sugary gum she had to chew. Since sugar-free gum in the early 1970s did not blow good bubbles, the production team had to use real sugary gum.
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Before Gene Wilder, the names considered for the role of Willy Wonka included many famous figures such as Joel Grey, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and the Monty Python team. Ron Moody and Jon Pertwee turned the role down, while Frankie Howerd was unable to join the project due to scheduling conflicts.
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In the DVD commentaries, the child actors revealed that the boy named Winkelman was played by director Mel Stuart's son, Peter Stuart. Bob Roe, who sits in front of Peter Ostrum in the classroom scenes, and the girl with braids in the opposite row, Madeline, were also children of the production crew.
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Augustus Gloop is German, while Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teavee are American. While Veruca Salt's nationality is unclear in the novel, her introduction scene in the film implies that she lives in the United Kingdom. Charlie's nationality, however, is deliberately left ambiguous in both films and the novel.
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Veruca Salt arrives at Wonka's factory wearing a mink fur coat and shows off her wealth by saying she has many more furs. This display sharply distinguishes her from children of modest backgrounds such as Charlie the newspaper delivery boy, Augustus the butcher's son, Violet the car salesman's daughter, and Mike the geography teacher's son.
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When Mel Stuart brought the book to his producer friend David L. Wolper, he was unaware that Wolper was looking for a film that would offer a product placement opportunity with the Quaker Oats company. This coincidence gave rise to one of the era's most innovative collaborations between a confectionery manufacturer and a film company, and led to the creation of the Wonka Bar.
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Although the film is often assumed to be a Warner Bros. production, it was in fact shot independently and distributed by Paramount Pictures in 1971. When the theatrical distribution rights expired in 1977, Paramount, believing the film had lost its commercial value in the pre-home-video era, did not renew them. The rights were finally purchased in 1983 by Warner Bros., which was expanding its Warner Home Video catalog after the home video boom of the early '80s, and the film was released on VHS and Betamax for the first time in 1984.
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Wonka's literary quotations were not in Roald Dahl's original screenplay. David Seltzer added these quotations while rewriting the screenplay, with a single purpose in mind. Among the quotations are lines such as "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, "This suspense is terrible, I hope it will last" from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by" from John Masefield's poem Sea-Fever.
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Mel Stuart initially did not want Willy Wonka to be a musical; the film was to be a plain fantasy adaptation, in line with Roald Dahl's wishes. But the producers persuaded him, citing the successes of Mary Poppins (1964) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). The musical numbers were incorporated into the film through David Seltzer's additions to Dahl's original screenplay, which infuriated Dahl.
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Contrary to popular belief, the Slugworth subplot and the Fizzy Lifting Drinks sequence appeared briefly in the novel and were not entirely original concepts. Slugworth was one of the rival chocolate factory owners who sent spies to steal Wonka's recipes. This element was expanded to test the children's morals and attitudes. Although the Fizzy Lifting Drinks were described in the book as they are, Charlie had never tasted them; the scene in which Charlie breaks the rules was added to create a more dramatic reckoning in the finale.
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One of the flaws David Seltzer found in the book was that Charlie was too flawless and faultless compared to the other children, which did not feel realistic to him. So the Slugworth subplot and the Fizzy Lifting Drinks scene were added to the film: to show that Charlie too could make mistakes, but that the difference was that he admitted his mistake and made amends. These scenes were removed from the 2005 film on the grounds that they were not in the book, and ironically the film was criticized for Charlie being too flawless.
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Children's literature authors are generally distant toward Hollywood adaptations. Roald Dahl openly told the press that he hated the film. Similarly, Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth (1970), leveled harsh criticism at the Chuck Jones/MGM co-production. E.B. White called the 1973 Hanna-Barbera version of Charlotte's Web a "travesty." C.S. Lewis dreaded a bad adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia so much that he wrote to the BBC asking them not to film his stories. P.L. Travers also hated Mary Poppins (1964). The irony is that all these films achieved box office success, received warm responses from critics, and are regarded by the public as classic children's films.
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After missing his deadlines, Roald Dahl rejected the film, whose screenplay was partly rewritten by David Seltzer. Dahl said he was "disappointed" because he felt the film focused too much on Willy Wonka and too little on Charlie. He was also angered by Seltzer's changes to the screenplay, such as turning Slugworth into a spy and the "Fizzy Lifting Drinks" scene. On top of that, Seltzer having Wonka constantly quote lines not in the book added insult to injury. As a result, Dahl refused to sell the rights to the book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
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After the success of this film, the studio planned to adapt the sequel book, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. But Roald Dahl hated the film so much that he refused to sell the rights to his next book. Although writing an original sequel screenplay was discussed, the idea was shelved and no sequel was ever made.
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The film's original distributor was Paramount Pictures. When the film failed at the box office and was briefly forgotten, Paramount did not renew its rights during the contract renewal period and transferred them to Warner Bros. When the film was re-released in 4K UHD for its 50th anniversary, the original Paramount Pictures logo was added to the disc for historical purposes; this was the first time the film had been released with its original opening logos in decades.
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According to a publisher who worked with Roald Dahl for many years, the author was generally regarded as difficult, abusive and intolerable. Memoirs recently brought to light by The New Yorker confirm this: Robert Gottlieb, a senior executive at Dahl's publisher Alfred A. Knopf, wrote that Dahl was so demanding and rude to his staff that no one wanted to work with him. Despite Dahl's charm, his behavior at Knopf grew increasingly erratic and irritable; secretaries were treated like servants, and tantrums and letters flew.
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In a subplot specific to this film, a man posing as the industrialist Arthur Slugworth (who is later revealed to be a fraud) offers all five children a bribe to steal Wonka's secrets. In one scene, Veruca is implied to consider the offer, while Mike is clearly seen volunteering for espionage. Charlie refuses the offer, while Augustus and Violet appear unconcerned by the temptation.
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The film was made on a limited budget of only $3 million, which forced Mel Stuart and David Seltzer to cut some scenes from the book. The best known of these are the scene in which the Prince of Pondicherry, India, has Wonka build him a chocolate palace, and the replacement of the scene in which squirrels sort nuts with the golden geese room. Training dozens of squirrels to recreate the scene from the book was impossible for this film.
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Author Roald Dahl wrote the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was initially hired to write the screenplay. However, he never completed the screenplay; instead, he produced a draft that constantly referred to different chapters of his book. David Seltzer, the writer of The Omen, was assigned to rewrite it. Dahl then abandoned and disowned the film, but remained credited as the sole screenwriter.
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The film's NBC broadcast on November 23, 1975 began 45 minutes late because an NFL game between the Oakland Raiders and the Washington Redskins went into overtime. Despite numerous calls from people wanting to see the film, the game stayed on the air. The 1968 "Heidi" game and the reaction that followed had led networks to change their rules.
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The idea of adapting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into a film came about when director Mel Stuart's 10-year-old daughter read the book and asked her father to make a film of it. Stuart then took the book to producer David L. Wolper, who was at the time in talks with the Quaker Oats company. Quaker had recently acquired a confectionery company; Wolper persuaded Quaker to produce "Wonka Bars," and the company financed the film in order to promote its products.
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There were claims that the film's title was changed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory at the request of African-American groups who were uncomfortable with the words "Charlie" and "chocolate" appearing together. Racial sensitivities also influenced the appearance of the Oompa-Loompas. In the novel's first editions, the Oompa-Loompas were described as black African pygmies. The NAACP protested that this depiction too closely resembled enslaved Africans. The film's production team chose to portray the Oompa-Loompas with orange skin and green hair. Roald Dahl, meanwhile, revised the novel in 1973 and described the Oompa-Loompas as white-skinned.
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Before taking his guests aboard the Wonkatania, Wonka introduces his boat in French: 'Mesdames et messieurs, maintenant nous allons faire grand petit voyage par bateau. Voulez-vous entrer le Wonkatania?' Translated into English, he says, 'Ladies and gentlemen, now we are going to take a grand little boat trip. Would you like to enter the Wonkatania?'
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As he boards the Wonkatania, Grandpa Joe says, 'If she's a lady, then I'm a Vermicious Knid.' The Vermicious Knids, whom Wonka mentioned earlier, are bogeyman-like creatures that appear in many of Roald Dahl's works. In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, they appear as slime-like aliens that occupy the US Space Hotel.
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At the end of the film, the German town of Nördlingen, over which the Glass Elevator flies, has a rare feature. The town lies inside a 25-kilometre-wide crater formed by an asteroid impact 14 million years ago. The ridges of the crater's rim can be made out at the top of the screen; these are not the town walls. Nördlingen and some of the stone structures around it are speckled with tiny diamonds created by the impact.
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The photograph shown in the news report announcing Paraguayan gambler Alberto Minoleta as the fifth Golden Ticket holder belongs to Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler's private secretary. The character being Paraguayan is an inside joke referring to leading Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele fleeing to South America to escape justice. At the time, Bormann was also thought to have fled to South America, but a year after the film his remains were found in Berlin; he had died in 1945 while trying to flee the city during the Soviet siege.
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If you look carefully at the 'Candy Man' musical scene, you will see the shopkeeper Bill accidentally hit a girl in the face as he opens the counter. This may be entirely accidental and unscripted, but it has led fans to speculate that the character is not actually a very good person, since Bill throws free candy to the rich children, immediately demands money from Charlie and scolds him for eating it quickly. The joke of the counter hitting the girl in the face also appeared 46 years later in the animated version Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017).
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Veruca Salt's name, also spelled 'Verruca' or 'Verucca', is a medical term generally used for a virus-caused wart on the foot. Given the character's personality, this seems quite fitting. In both the book and the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka says while learning the children's names that 'verruca' means a wart on the sole of the foot.
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In the candy shop scene at the beginning of the film, a sign reading 'Fickelgruber's Candy' is visible. In the book, Fickelgruber, along with Slugworth, is one of the rival candy makers who send spies into Wonka's factory. Especially considering that the film was shot in Germany, it is a rather eerie name choice for a children's book and film; it rhymes with Schicklgruber, the original surname of Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Hitler.
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Augustus Gloop is from the West German city of Dusselheim, Violet Beauregarde from the town of Miles City, Montana (the only real place mentioned), and Mike Teevee from Marble Falls, Arizona. Charlie Bucket's and Veruca Salt's hometowns are never mentioned during the film, but Veruca and her family most likely live in Britain: her number is on the British Isles, Mr Salt tells his workers he will give a 1-pound bonus to whoever finds the next Golden Ticket, and inside the factory there is a sign reading 'SALT'S: THE QUEEN'S PEANUTS!'
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There is some debate over the correct spelling of Mike Teevee's surname. In the film's closing credits and US promotional materials, the surname appears as 'Teevee'. In the book it is written as 'Teavee', while in the film, in the scene where the children sign the big contract, Mike signs his name as 'Mike T.V.'. In the DVD commentary, Paris Themmen states that director Mel Stuart told him to sign his name as 'Mike T.V.' so that the scene could be shot faster.
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The country in which the film takes place remained a mystery for many years. Various measures were taken to ensure this: the cars have no US license plates. The newspaper's name is generic and does not reveal the city's name. The identity of the coin Charlie finds in the gutter is not specified. The candy shop owner, after selling the chocolate, does not say the exact change as is customary, but merely clears his throat. Mr. Wilkinson/Slugworth offers Charlie a bribe by saying 'Ten thousand of these', but does not use the name of the currency. Charlie never appears on television; all the countries are revealed in TV interviews. On the day they come to Wonka's factory, everyone except Charlie and Grandpa Joe carries the flag of their own country. In the flying scene at the end, the cars are seen driving on the right. It has emerged that the film was mostly shot in Germany and other parts of the United Kingdom.
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The film repeatedly references the Vermicious Knids without showing them. These are predatory aliens from Roald Dahl's works and are the main antagonists of the novel 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator' (1972). They come from the imaginary planet Vermes, supposedly outside the Solar System.
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When Veruca says in the Inventing Room that Wonka's behavior is 'completely crazy', Charlie defends Wonka by saying, 'And that's not a bad thing!' Charlie's ability to embrace and understand the playfulness and eccentric creativity in Wonka's factory, in a way the other children cannot or do not, indicates that he is the right child to inherit the factory.
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The other four Wonka children represent some of the Seven Deadly Sins: Augustus Gloop Gluttony, Veruca Salt Greed, Violet Beauregarde Pride (because she makes clear that she wants to be the center of attention and is superior to her classmate), and Mike Teevee Sloth (reluctance to work, that is, laziness; remember that he spends his life in front of the television).
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It is Marilyn Manson's favorite film, and he references it in some of his songs. When the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was announced, he wanted the role of Willy Wonka so much that he actively campaigned for it, but lost the role to Johnny Depp. Manson also covered 'Wondrous Boat Ride' as 'Prelude (The Family Trip)', the opening track of his album 'Portrait of an American Family'.
- #357
Near the end of the film, Willy Wonka throws a tantrum because Charlie Bucket violated a clause of the contract. As seen at the beginning of the film, Wonka had all five children sign a contract with him, and none of them read the terms. Mr. Salt and Mr. Beauregarde suspected that Wonka was trying to trick the children. The only person who read the terms of that contract was Wonka himself.
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The film implies that the children who leave the tour neglected the terms and conditions of the contract they signed. As each child is eliminated, the contract they signed becomes void. Likewise, Charlie violated the contract by tasting the fizzy lifting drinks and supported this situation.
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While Grandpa Joe tells the story of Mr. Wonka's factory, he says of his rivals, 'Ah, Slugworth, he was the worst!' It turns out that Slugworth is still causing trouble by following the Golden Ticket holders. Also, the phrase 'he was the worst' implies that he has not been seen for some time, and indeed the Slugworth in the film is a fake set up by Wonka.
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During the song 'Pure Imagination', Willy Wonka swings his cane around to hold back the crowd. In the DVD commentary, Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee, recounted that during one take Gene Wilder accidentally hit him with his cane. Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, wrote in her memoir that the cane struck her several times as well.
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The scene in which Violet Beauregarde turns into a blueberry was shot in two stages: first an inflatable suit was pumped full of air, then Denise Nickerson was placed inside a two-piece styrofoam mold. As the Oompa Loompas rolled her, they lost control and slammed her into the wall repeatedly; in the DVD commentary, Denise said they 'didn't have a blueberry license'. At the time, the color layering technique was still in development; while in the book Violet's face and hair turn blue, Mel Stuart could only make her face blue. This technique was later perfected for the lightsaber effects in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
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In the scenes at the Bucket family's home, Ernst Ziegler, who played Grandpa George, would take off his shoes and hide them under the bed. While filming the part of 'I've Got a Golden Ticket' where the bed is looked under, director Mel Stuart wanted to film the shoes, but Ziegler objected, afraid they would be taken away since they were his last possessions from before the Second World War. In the end, Stuart convinced him.
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In the DVD commentary, Peter Ostrum said that he and Jack Albertson had eagerly looked forward to the Fizzy Lifting Drink scene, thinking it would be great fun, but that it was not enjoyable at all because of the sharpness of the metal rigging and the straps pinching their groin area. Albertson jokingly added that Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite should have been playing in the background of this scene.
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Filming Mike's fall scene was difficult. The long shots inside the television were done with a blue screen. For the close-ups, Paris Themmen stood on a platform inside a giant television set. The scene where his mother lifts him was shot with a doll, and the close-up of him dangling from her fingers was filmed by suspending Paris from a fabric-covered styrofoam thumb and index finger.
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The actors who played the Oompa Loompas in the 2003 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory said the makeup was extremely uncomfortable and that the hot studio lights melted it, so the makeup artist had to stay on set constantly to touch it up. At the end of the day, scraping off the makeup layer by layer became torture for the actors.
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The book never specifies where Charlie's town and Wonka's factory are located. The film does not specify either, but all the exterior shots were done in Germany to give it a fairy-tale look. All the actors in Charlie's town speak with both American and British accents, mixed here and there with strange German inflections, which makes it even harder to pin down an exact location.
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The film's art director was Harper Goff. His name may not be familiar to general audiences, but fantasy and science fiction fans immediately recognize him as the art director of Disney's '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'. Along with many special effects, he designed the exterior of the iconic Nautilus and the submarine's interior sets.
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According to Julie Dawn Cole's book, her first scene was actually the last scene shot with her. It was the scene at her father's workplace, where the employees open all the Wonka bars. Before this scene was shot, Julie had entered puberty and the crew noticed. Her breasts had grown; the director wanted to bind them so they would look smaller as in the other scenes. Julie asked them not to do this. The director gave up on it.
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Julie Dawn Cole, who played Veruca Salt, admitted in the DVD commentaries that she accidentally kept the Everlasting Gobstopper and the Golden Ticket from the set. Peter Ostrum, on the other hand, stated that he returned the Golden Ticket because he was told to. Cole's collection of memorabilia also included a Scrumdiddlyumptious bar and a Wonka Bar; the Golden Ticket is currently displayed in a candy shop in Florida.
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While Mike Teavee is an angry character in the novel, the film version is much calmer and relatively friendly toward the other children. He is also the only 'naughty' child who enjoys his transformation in the factory, which sets him apart from the others; his mother's shocked reaction stands in contrast to this.
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In their DVD commentaries, Denise Nickerson and Paris Themmen said that, influenced by the time they spent with Julie Dawn Cole, a British accent crept into some of their lines. Nickerson's repetition of the word 'Everlasting Gobstopper' and Themmen's question after passing through the television bear traces of this influence.
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Although Mike Teavee's obsession with television is common to both the novel and the film, his interests differ: in the novel he loves gangster films, while in the film he is drawn to westerns. Additionally, Mike in the film is portrayed as a boy who loves guns, and his father tells him he will not buy him a gun until he is 12.
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Gloria Manon, who plays the woman demanding Wonka bars for her husband Harold in the hostage scene, also plays the female reporter who interviews Mike Teavee. Although she remains slightly outside the camera angle, she skillfully combines these two roles with a single line directed at Mike.
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In an interview during the 40th anniversary celebrations, Denise Nickerson, who played Violet, revealed that she had 13 teeth decayed because of the sugary gum she had to chew. Since sugar-free gum in the early 1970s did not blow good bubbles, the production team had to use real sugary gum.
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Before Gene Wilder, the names considered for the role of Willy Wonka included many famous figures such as Joel Grey, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and the Monty Python team. Ron Moody and Jon Pertwee turned down the role, while Frankie Howerd could not join the project due to scheduling conflicts.
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In the DVD commentaries, the child actors revealed that the boy named Winkelman was played by director Mel Stuart's son, Peter Stuart. Bob Roe, who sits in front of Peter Ostrum in the classroom scenes, and the girl with braids across the aisle, Madeline, were also children of the production team.
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Augustus Gloop is German, while Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teavee are American. Veruca Salt's nationality is unclear in the novel, while the introduction scene in the film implies that she lives in the United Kingdom. Charlie's nationality, meanwhile, is deliberately left ambiguous in both films and the novel.
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Veruca Salt arrives at Wonka's factory wearing a mink fur coat and shows off her wealth by saying she has many more furs. This display sharply sets her apart from children of modest backgrounds such as Charlie the newspaper delivery boy, Augustus the butcher's son, Violet the car salesman's daughter and Mike the geography teacher's son.
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Although the film is often assumed to be a Warner Bros. production, it was in fact shot independently and distributed by Paramount Pictures in 1971. When the theatrical distribution rights expired in 1977, Paramount, believing in the pre-home-video era that the film had lost its commercial value, did not renew them. The rights were finally acquired in 1983 by Warner Bros., which was expanding the Warner Home Video catalogue after the home video boom of the early '80s, and the film was first released on VHS and Betamax in 1984.
- #436
Although large quantities of chocolate bars were specially designed for the film, very few props and accessories have survived to the present day. Director Mel Stuart, noting that no one knew during production that the film would be this successful, expressed his regret at not having kept the props.
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Wonka's literary quotations were not in Roald Dahl's original screenplay. David Seltzer added these quotations while rewriting the script, with a single purpose. Among the quotations are lines such as "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, "This suspense is terrible, I hope it will last" from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by" from John Masefield's poem Sea-Fever.
- #439
Mel Stuart initially did not want Willy Wonka to be a musical; the film was to be a plain fantasy adaptation, in line with Roald Dahl's wishes. However, the producers persuaded him by citing the successes of Mary Poppins (1964) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). The musical numbers were incorporated into the film through David Seltzer's additions to Dahl's original screenplay, which infuriated Dahl considerably.
- #440
Contrary to popular belief, the Slugworth subplot and the Fizzy Lifting Drinks episode appeared briefly in the novel and were not entirely original concepts. Slugworth was one of the rival chocolate factory owners who sent spies to steal Wonka's recipes. This element was expanded to test the children's morals and attitudes. Although the Fizzy Lifting Drinks are described in the book as they are, Charlie had never tasted them; the scene in which Charlie breaks the rules was added to create a more dramatic reckoning in the finale.
- #441
One of the flaws David Seltzer found in the book was that Charlie was too flawless and faultless compared to the other children, which did not seem realistic to him. So the Slugworth subplot and the Fizzy Lifting Drinks scene were added to the film: to show that Charlie too could make mistakes, but that the difference was that he admitted his mistake and redeemed himself. These scenes were removed from the 2005 film on the grounds that they were not in the book, and ironically the film was subjected to criticism that Charlie was too flawless.
- #442
Children's literature authors are generally distant toward Hollywood adaptations. Roald Dahl openly told the press that he hated the film. Similarly, Norton Juster, author of the book The Phantom Tollbooth (1970), directed harsh criticism at the Chuck Jones/MGM co-production. E.B. White described the 1973 Hanna-Barbera version of Charlotte's Web as "travesty." C.S. Lewis dreaded a bad adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia so much that he wrote to the BBC asking them not to film his stories. P.L. Travers also hated Mary Poppins (1964). The irony is that all these films achieved box office success, received warm responses from critics, and are regarded by the public as classic children's films.
- #443
After missing his deadlines, Roald Dahl rejected the film, whose screenplay was partly rewritten by David Seltzer. Dahl said he was "disappointed" because he felt the film focused too much on Willy Wonka and not enough on Charlie. He was also angered by the changes Seltzer made to the screenplay – such as turning Slugworth into a spy and the "fizzy lifting drinks" scene. On top of that, Seltzer having Wonka constantly quote lines not in the book added insult to injury. As a result, Dahl refused to sell the rights to the book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
- #444
After the success of this film, the studio planned to adapt the sequel book Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. However, Roald Dahl hated the film so much that he refused to sell the rights to his next book. Although writing an original sequel screenplay was discussed, the idea was shelved and no sequel was ever made.
- #445
According to a publisher who worked with Roald Dahl for many years, the author was generally seen as difficult, abusive and intolerable. Memoirs recently brought to light by The New Yorker confirm this: Robert Gottlieb, a senior executive at Dahl's publisher Alfred A. Knopf, wrote that Dahl was so demanding and rude to his staff that no one wanted to work with him. Despite Dahl's charm, his behaviour at Knopf grew increasingly erratic and irritable; secretaries were treated like servants, and tantrums and letters flew.
- #446
In a side story specific to this film, a man posing as the industrialist Arthur Slugworth (who is later revealed to be a fraud) offers all five children a bribe to steal Wonka's secrets. In one scene, Veruca is implied to consider the offer, while Mike is clearly seen volunteering for espionage. Charlie refuses the offer; Augustus and Violet appear indifferent to the temptation.
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The film was made on a limited budget of only $3 million, which forced Mel Stuart and David Seltzer to cut some scenes from the book. The best known of these are the chocolate palace scene that the Indian Prince Pondicherry had Wonka build for him, and the replacement of the squirrels sorting nuts with the room of golden geese. Training dozens of squirrels to recreate the scene from the book was impossible for this film.
- #449
Author Roald Dahl wrote the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and was initially hired to write the screenplay. However, he never completed the screenplay; instead he produced a draft that constantly referred to different chapters of his book. David Seltzer, the writer of The Omen, was assigned to rewrite it. Dahl then abandoned and disowned the film, but remained credited as the sole screenwriter.
- #450
The film's NBC broadcast on 23 November 1975 began 45 minutes late because an NFL game between the Oakland Raiders and the Washington Redskins went to overtime. Despite numerous calls from people wanting to see the film, the game stayed on the air. The 1968 "Heidi" game and the reaction that followed had led the networks to change their rules.
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The idea of adapting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into a film came about when director Mel Stuart's 10-year-old daughter read the book and asked her father to make a film of it. Stuart then took the book to producer David L. Wolper, who was at the time in talks with the Quaker Oats company. Quaker had recently bought a confectionery company; Wolper persuaded Quaker to produce "Wonka Bars", and the company financed the film in order to promote its products.
- #454
There were claims that the film's title was changed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory at the request of African-American groups who were uncomfortable with the words "Charlie" and "chocolate" appearing side by side. Racial sensitivities also influenced the appearance of the Oompa-Loompas. In the novel's first editions, the Oompa-Loompas were described as black African pygmies. The NAACP protested that this depiction too closely resembled enslaved Africans. The film's production team chose to portray the Oompa-Loompas with orange skin and green hair. Roald Dahl, meanwhile, revised the novel in 1973 and described the Oompa-Loompas as white-skinned.
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As he boards the Wonkatania, Grandpa Joe says, 'If she's a lady, then I'm a Vermicious Knid.' The Vermicious Knids, whom Wonka mentioned earlier, are bogeyman-like creatures that appear in many of Roald Dahl's works. In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, they turn up as slime-like aliens that take over the US Space Hotel.
- #462
The German town of Nördlingen, over which the Glass Elevator flies at the end of the film, has a rare feature. The town sits inside a 25-kilometre-wide crater formed by an asteroid impact 14 million years ago. The ridges of the crater's rim can be made out at the top of the screen; these are not the town walls. Nördlingen and some of the stone structures around it are speckled with tiny diamonds created by the impact.
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The photograph shown in the news report announcing Paraguayan gambler Alberto Minoleta as the fifth Golden Ticket holder is of Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Hitler's private secretary. The character being Paraguayan is an in-joke referring to leading Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele fleeing to South America to escape justice. At the time, Bormann was also thought to have fled to South America, but a year after the film his remains were found in Berlin; he had died in 1945 while trying to flee the city during the Soviet siege.
- #465
If you watch the 'The Candy Man' musical number closely, you can see the shopkeeper Bill accidentally strike a girl in the face as he opens the counter. This may be entirely accidental and unscripted, but it has led fans to speculate that Bill is not actually a very good person, since he throws free sweets to the rich children, immediately demands money from Charlie and scolds him for eating it quickly. The gag of the counter striking the girl's face also appeared 46 years later in the animated version Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017).
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In the candy shop scene at the beginning of the film, a sign reading 'Fickelgruber's Candy' is visible. In the book, Fickelgruber, along with Slugworth, is one of the rival confectioners who send spies into Wonka's factory. Especially considering that the film was shot in Germany, it is a rather eerie name choice for a children's book and film; it rhymes with Schicklgruber, the original surname of Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Hitler.
- #468
Augustus Gloop is from the West German city of Dusselheim, Violet Beauregarde from Miles City, Montana (the only real place mentioned), and Mike Teevee from Marble Falls, Arizona. Charlie Bucket's and Veruca Salt's hometowns are never mentioned during the film, but Veruca and her family most likely live in Britain: her number is in the British Isles, Mr Salt tells his workers he will pay a £1 bonus to whoever finds the next Golden Ticket, and inside the factory there is a sign reading 'SALT'S: THE QUEEN'S PEANUTS!'
- #469
There is some debate over the correct spelling of Mike Teevee's surname. In the film's closing credits and US promotional materials, his surname appears as 'Teevee'. In the book it is spelled 'Teavee', while in the film, in the scene where the children sign the big contract, Mike signs his name as 'Mike T.V.'. In the DVD commentary, Paris Themmen stated that director Mel Stuart told him to sign his name as 'Mike T.V.' so that the scene could be shot more quickly.
- #470
The country where the film takes place remained a mystery for many years. Several measures were taken to achieve this: the cars have no US license plates. The newspaper's name is generic and does not reveal the city's name. The identity of the coin Charlie finds in the gutter is not specified. The shopkeeper, after selling the chocolate, does not state the exact change as usual, but merely clears his throat. Mr. Wilkinson/Slugworth offers Charlie a bribe by saying 'Ten thousand of these,' but does not use the name of the currency. Charlie never appears on television; all the countries are revealed in TV interviews. On the day they come to Wonka's factory, everyone except Charlie and Grandpa Joe carries their own country's flag. In the final flying scene, the cars can be seen driving on the right. It has emerged that the film was mostly shot in Germany and other parts of the United Kingdom.
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The film repeatedly references the Vermicious Knids without showing them. These are predatory aliens from Roald Dahl's works and are the main antagonists of the novel 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator' (1972). They come from the fictional planet Vermes, supposedly outside the Solar System.
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When Veruca says in the Inventing Room that Wonka's behavior is 'completely crazy,' Charlie defends Wonka by saying, 'And that's not a bad thing!' Charlie's ability to embrace and understand the playfulness and eccentric creativity in Wonka's factory, in a way the other children cannot or do not, indicates that he is the right child to inherit the factory.
- #478
The other four Wonka children represent some of the Seven Deadly Sins: Augustus Gloop is Gluttony, Veruca Salt is Greed, Violet Beauregarde is Pride (because she makes clear she wants to be the center of attention and is superior to her classmate), and Mike Teevee is Sloth (reluctance to work, that is, laziness; remember that he spends his life in front of the television).
- #479
It is Marilyn Manson's favorite film, and he references it in some of his songs. When the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was announced, he wanted the role of Willy Wonka so much that he actively campaigned for it, but lost the role to Johnny Depp. Manson also covered 'Wondrous Boat Ride' as 'Prelude (The Family Trip),' the opening track of his album 'Portrait of an American Family.'
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The film implies that the children who leave the tour neglected the terms and conditions of the contract they signed. As each child is eliminated, the contract they signed becomes void. Likewise, Charlie also violated the contract by tasting the fizzy lifting drinks and supported this situation.
- #483
While Grandpa Joe tells the story of Mr. Wonka's factory, he says of his rivals, 'Ah, Slugworth, he was the worst!' It turns out that Slugworth is still causing trouble by following the Golden Ticket holders. Also, the phrase 'he was the worst' implies that he has not been seen for a while, and indeed the Slugworth in the film is a fake set up by Wonka.
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Easter Eggs & References (29)
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The rock band Veruca Salt, best known for their song "Seether," among others, got their name from this movie. Subsequently, the rock band Seether (best known for songs like "Remedy," "Fake It," and "Fine Again") got their names from that song, giving them a couple of degrees of separation from this movie.
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When Alberto Minoleta, the Paraguayan gambler, is announced as the fifth Golden Ticket finder, the photo shown on the news is a photo of Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, and Adolf Hitler's private secretary. The character being from Paraguay is an inside joke since some prominent Nazis, including Adolph Eichmann and Josef Mengele, fled to South America to escape justice. At the time, it was believed that Bormann had also fled to South America, but the year after the film's release, Bormann's remains were found in Berlin; he died trying to flee Berlin during the Soviet siege of the city in 1945.
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The film repeatedly references the Vermicious Knids without depicting them. They are predatory aliens from Roald Dahl's works and the main villains of the novel "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator" (1972). They supposedly originate on the fictional planet Vermes, located outside the Solar System.
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There's been some debate about the correct spelling of Mike Teevee's last name. In the movie's closing credits, as well as in all of the promotional media for the movie's U.S. release, Mike's last name is spelled "Teevee." In the book, it is spelled "Teavee," finally, in the movie, during the scene where all the children sign the large contract, Mike is seen signing his name as "Mike T.V." In the DVD commentary, Paris Themmen said that during the contract signing scene, he was told by director Mel Stuart to sign his name as "Mike T.V." because it would allow the scene to be filmed quicker.
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In the first classroom scene, director Mel Stuart's daughter Madeline Stuart can be seen chewing gum and blowing a bubble, just as Charlie approached the teacher's desk. In the second classroom scene the teacher asks her how many Wonka bars she opened, which she replies "about a hundred."
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If you look closely during the "Candyman" musical sequence, Bill, the candy shop owner, accidentally hits a girl in the face when he opens up the counter. This may have been purely accidental and unscripted, but this has led to speculation by fans of the movie that the character is not a nice character because he willingly throws candy at the rich kids who come into the store and doesn't demand payment; when Charlie comes into the shop for candy and immediately begins to eat, Bill presses for payment, and he lectures Charlie about eating too fast. The gag of the girl's face being hit with the counter was shown in an animated version of the movie with the cat and mouse Tom and Jerry in Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (2017) released 46 years later.
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When climbing aboard the Wonkatania, Grandpa Joe said, "If she's a lady, I'm a Vermicious Knid." Previously mentioned by Wonka, Vermicious Knids are boogeymen mentioned in numerous Roald Dahl works, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They appear in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator as blob-like aliens that invade the Space Hotel USA.
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On the DVD commentary, the child actors revealed that the child named Winkelman was played by Mel Stuart's son Peter Stuart. The uncredited boy sitting in front of Peter Ostrum in the classroom scenes is Bob Roe, son of first assistant director Jack Roe, and that the uncredited girl with pigtails in the classroom across the aisle from Peter was played by Mel's daughter Madeline. In the featurette "Pure Imagination," Mel mentions his daughter was ten years old in 1970 when she read the book, and suggested to him that he approach "Uncle Dave" (David L. Wolper) with the idea of turning the book into a movie.
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In the candy shop scene at the beginning of the film, a sign for "Fickelgruber's Fudge" can be seen. In the book, Fickelgruber, along with Slugworth, was one of the rival candy makers who sent spies to Wonka's factory. It is a rather creepy choice of name for a children's book & movie, especially given that the movie was filmed in Germany; it rhymes with Schicklgruber, the original surname of Alois Hitler, father of Adolf Hitler.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
The "evil candy-store owner" Internet myth is based on clunky choreography and missed marks, and ignores the major plot point that same candy-store owner convinces Charlie to buy a Wonka bar for his grandpa -- the very bar containing the fifth golden ticket.
Deeper Meaning (16)
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When Veruca exclaims in the Inventing Room that Wonka's behavior is "absolutely bonkers," Charlie defends Wonka, saying, "And that's not bad!" Charlie's ability to embrace and understand the playfulness and eccentric creativity of Wonka's factory, where the other children couldn't or wouldn't, points to him as the right child to inherit the factory.
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The other four Wonka kids represent some of the Seven Deadly Sins: Augustus Gloop is Gluttony, Veruca Salt is Greed, and Violet Beauregarde is Pride (because she wants to be the center of attention and better than her classmate, as she even states publicly), and Mike Teevee is Sloth (a disinclination to labor, or simply, laziness. His life is spent in front of the television set, remember).
- #521
Toward the end of the film, Willy Wonka has a temper tantrum because Charlie Bucket has violated a term of his contract. As seen earlier in the movie, Wonka ensured that all five children would sign contracts with him and that none of them would read their terms. Mr. Salt and Mr. Beauregarde suspected that Wonka was trying to fool the children. The only person who ever read the terms of that contract was Wonka himself.
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Veruca Salt demonstrates her family's wealth by arriving at Wonka's factory dressed in a mink coat. She brags about owning several more fur coats. Veruca's wealth sets her apart from the other children regarding social class. Charlie works for a living as a paperboy, Augustus is the son of a lower-class butcher, Violet is the daughter of a car salesman, and Mike is the son of a geography teacher. None of them seem to have wealthy backgrounds.
- #524
The film implies that kids who dropped out of the tour neglected the terms and conditions of the contract they signed. Once each kid was eliminated, the contract they signed became null and void. Likewise, Charlie ignored the contract by sampling fizzy lifting drinks, further supporting this.
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Veruca Salt's name, also spelled "Verruca" or "Verucca," is a medical term for a wart, usually found on the foot, and caused by a virus. Seems appropriate, considering the character's personality. In both the book and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), when learning the children's names, Willy Wonka mentions that "verruca" is a wart on the bottom of a foot.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
The transportation in the factory gets progressively smaller as more and more children are eliminated. This has led some viewers to suspect that Wonka purposely allowed four of the five children to get hurt so he could have only one remaining child with them to be his heir.
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Contains a major spoiler — show
As Grandpa Joe tells the story of Mr. Wonka's factory, he notes that of his rivals, "Oh, Slugworth, he was the worst!" It turns out that Slugworth is still causing trouble as he tracks down the Golden Ticket finders. Also, "he was the worst," implying that he hasn't been seen for some time, and indeed, the Slugworth in the film is a fake setup by Wonka.
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Denise Nickerson had a Violet-like experience in real life. In the DVD commentary she said that one day during math class the children started pointing at her and laughing, and one of her friends told her she had turned purple. The makeup she had used for the film had seeped into her pores and was starting to resurface (she jokes that it prevented her from getting dates at school).
Career & Awards (19)
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When asked his thoughts on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Gene Wilder stated that he enjoyed Johnny Depp's performance as Willy Wonka but disliked the film as a whole, as he was not a fan of Tim Burton as a director, and said he was generally insulted when his films were remade, despite the Tim Burton film being an adaptation of the book and not a remake.
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With this film, Gene Wilder became the first of three actors to be nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor - Comedy/Musical for playing Willy Wonka. The other two being Johnny Depp for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Timothée Chalamet for Wonka (2023).
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This is the only film role of Peter Ostrum, who played Charlie Bucket. Ostrum turned down David L. Wolper's offer for a three-movie contract because he wanted to keep his options open. After feeling underwhelmed at the premiere, he bought a horse, which led to him becoming a veterinarian. Ostrum only tried to return to acting once, when he auditioned to play Alan Strang after Peter Firth left the Broadway production of "Equus" in 1975. As of 2013, Julie Dawn Cole - who played Veruca Salt - is the only one of the child actors who was still acting.
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Life & Family (6)
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According to a publisher who worked with Roald Dahl for many years, the author was roundly considered to be a jerk, an abusive, intolerable person. This recently unearthed memoir the New Yorker covers confirms this: "For almost twenty years, his New York publisher was Alfred A. Knopf. In his memoir "Avid Reader," Robert Gottlieb, top brass there from 1963 to 1987, wrote a little about working with Dahl: His behavior towards the staff there was so demanding and rude that no one wanted to work with him. In any case, there was no one there who was elevated enough for him to deign to deal with. Roald was a tremendous charmer, but his behavior at Knopf grew more and more erratic and churlish. Secretaries were treated like servants, tantrums were thrown in person and letters, and Bob Bernstein, head of Random House, didn't accede to his immoderate and provocative financial demands.
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In the 1990s, Peter Ostrum, Denise Nickerson, Julie Dawn Cole and Paris Themmen attempted to make contact with Michael Bollner (who played Augustus Gloop), whom they had not seen since making the film, by paying for an ad in a German newspaper that read, 'Augustus, Show a Sign', asking him to reach out. Bollner eventually did respond and was surprised to learn the film had made such a cultural impact, which he had not been aware of as he had long stopped acting and the film was not often shown in his native Germany.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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